Maricopa County has committed to finding out what caused the ballot printer issues
PHOENIX — After 7% of voters were impacted by ballot printer issues across Maricopa County on Election Day, officials said Wednesday evening they are committed to determine what caused the problem at 70 voting centers.
“Over the past 24 hours, we have learned more about the printer issue that caused some ballots to not be read at Vote Centers yesterday…We understand that for people who went through it, this was frustrating, inconvenient and not how they pictured Election Day. We plan to get to the bottom of it,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman said in a joint statement.
Officials stated that they will seek to identify the root cause of the problem after the elections are over.
In the statement, they stated that the printer settings for Ballot On Demand printers were the exact same as those used in August Primary.
Technicians previously stated that the problem was with the printer settings and not the tabulator itself.
The paper used for casting votes was also the exact same thickness as those used in August. The Election Department test-printed hundreds of ballots, and they were all deemed acceptable by the Department. It wasn’t immediately known how many tabulators at separate voting centers had been tested.
“The good news is election administration has built in redundancies — backup plans when things don’t go as planned,” the statement said.
“This enables all valid votes to count even if technology, on occasion, fails.”
Nearly 17,000 ballots were placed at polls in Door 3. This is a safe compartment on tabulators that is used to store the votes when machines are unable scan them.
Later, the ballots were collected by election workers and taken to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.
“We are proud of the hybrid model we’ve created that allows registered voters to cast a ballot in the way they choose, by mail or in person, with bipartisan oversight,” the statement said.
“And we are confident in the work still to be done to count every vote securely and accurately.”
